The Sound of the Future

by Carlos Menezes

Sometimes my ears bleed.

This isn’t due to me suffering from a rare medical condition that would require a diagnosis from one of the characters in House, but rather from the music that the mainstream media bombards us with on a daily basis.

Now I know that there are much worse things to gripe about, but I’m always shocked at the scale of an industry where there is a plethora of ridiculously talented bands and artists that somehow will never really crack the market, while those that do go on to reap rewards on a near biblical scale.

Unfortunately one wouldn’t normally consider those that are pulling in the big-bucks with being the most talented artists out there.

I’m not the most clued up individual when it comes to the industry and all of its intricacies, but it doesn’t take a genius to realise that there has been something profoundly wrong with its accepted business model for quite a while now. How can a derailment of social evolution grunting “Gimme More” twenty times in a row make it onto the top charts while thousands of quality bands find themselves eeking out a living on a daily basis?

Currently one can make the sweeping statement that only those artists that are a sure-fire success will get the backing of the various record labels. Sadly, the most powerful indication of future success is a referable precedent. What this means is that the easiest way to get big financial backing is to provide a generic sound, while pitching yourself to the record labels with a ‘tried and tested’ angle, thereby limiting the diversity of the mainstream music scene.

This might be generalising, and there are plenty of exceptions to it out there, but the statement does carry quite a healthy dose of truth with it.

Thinking back to why I joined the online scene in the first place, one of the deciding factors was the fact that the medium provides an opportunity for demand to derive supply.

2007 saw quite a bit of development on this side with Prince, Radiohead, Madonna and the Arctic Monkeys being among those attracting attention for the tactics that they employed. Today I ran across a great post on Dodgy.co.za about some services that are looking to provide a more realistic and attainable platform for artists to launch their careers.

Sites such as Slicethepie, amazingtunes and SellaBand are allowing a much more natural process for artists to symbiotically evolve with their markets. Basically all three have a variation on the same business model: artists submit their tracks online (ala those doing so on MySpace). Nothing amazing there, but the cool part comes in where users can lend their financial backing to the bands and musicians, effectively becoming non-participating shareholders. A portion of future profits made by the bands then accrue to the users based on how much they paid in.

This backing should not only help the musicians with an immediate financial impact but should also provide a clearer indication to the big record labels of the demand that currently exists for the more obscure, or left-of-centre artists out there.

As this will decrease the reliance of artists to reach a certain critical mass in order to ensure their success, it should in theory leave them free to concentrate on the ultimately important factor - the music. In the age of the record labels many artists were all too ready to compromise on their music in order to crack the nod, while those that didn't paid the price for living in a world where they saw little rewards while the production line babies hogged the limelight.

Times are moving on!

I’d personally love to see this applied to the film industry as well, but unfortunately releasing a sample of an as yet unmade movie is much harder than releasing one or two tracks off an album.

P.S. If you’re interested also take a look at BlastSpace, a youth network and record label. I had the pleasure of meeting founder Robert Stephenson at a breakfast a while back, and I’m really chuffed with the development work that they’re pushing out.

2008/01/03 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

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